Overview

In a vicious, delicious contemporary novel inspired by Shakespeare’s Richard III, the lauded author of The Family Fortuna lifts the curtain on a high school thespian who’ll stop at nothing to land the lead. Rory is an antihero for the ages. Like Shakespeare’s Richard III, she confides in her audience, telling us exactly the lengths she’ll go to to secure the leading role in Bosworth Academy’s senior musical, confessing without shame that she is charming and conniving and brutally ambitious, that we will watch and root for her even as she manipulates and endangers those around her. And we do. Perhaps it’s because we don’t want to believe that she’s as relentless as she claims. Rory is an underdog, after all, a scholarship kid teased for her weight. Surely there will be redemption? Surely our dread and patience will be rewarded? Intricately plotted with an ingenious narrative that blends multiple viewpoints with script excerpts and an original musical score, Lindsay Eagar’s whip-smart, precision-crafted, and gleefully compulsive page-turner taps into the dark side of high school theater production. A diabolically good read, it forces our complicity as we wince and cheer for an arresting drama queen who just can’t help going full-tilt nasty in the pursuit of her dreams.

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9781536204674

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Reviews

A misunderstood thespian stops at nothing to obtain a lead role in this modern retelling of Shakespeare’s Richard III. . . .Through a narrative format that shifts between the first and third person, moves forward and backward in time, and incorporates prose, play scripts, and even a musical score, Rory’s numerous misdeeds are revealed. . . Reimagining Richard III as a toxic theater kid rather than a crown-hungry noble is thought provoking. . . . Sensationally tragic. —Kirkus Reviews (starred review) This is an ambitious reimagining of Shakespeare's Richard III that succeeds in large part because of the way Eagar (The Family Fortuna, 2023) handles Rory's narration. . . astonishing. A troubling, unforgettable read. —Booklist (starred review) A teen thespian launches a Machiavellian campaign to land a starring role in this fiendish Richard III homage from Eagar. . . . With myriad metafictional flourishes, the tale unfolds in five acts in third-person-present narration, which Eagar intercuts with scenes written like script excerpts, fourth-wall-breaking monologues from Rory, and even a musical score. An intersectionally diverse cast of nuanced characters adds depth; Rory, in particular, is a sympathetic antihero whose pain, desperation, and loneliness color every deed. —Publishers Weekly

Author Information

Lindsay Eagar is the highly acclaimed author of the young adult novel The Family Fortuna and of the middle-grade novels Hour of the Bees, Race to the Bottom of the Sea, The Bigfoot Files, and The Patron Thief of Bread. She lives in the mountains of Utah with her husband and their two daughters.

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